Atlantic hurricane season looking less active with El Niño brewing in Pacific

Aug. 02--After getting off to a precocious start, with a tropical storm and two hurricanes already on its resumé by July 8, the Atlantic hurricane season has been on hiatus.

And that might bode well for residents and property owners along the Gulf and Atlantic Coasts as well as U.S. taxpayers.

During last year's historically active, ferocious, and deadly season, Harvey and Irma alone caused close to $200 billion in damage, according to ICAT, the catastrophe insurance concern.

But the atmosphere is sending strong signals that this season won't be nearly as active in the Atlantic Basin, which includes the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, and might even finish below average in terms of hurricane numbers.

Last year saw the development of 17 named storms -- those with winds of at least 39 mph -- and 10 hurricanes, winds of 74 mph or better. The long-term seasonal averages are 11 named storms, and six hurricanes.

This season's brisk start evidently wasn't a harbinger.

The storm traffic for the rest of the season, which ends officially on Nov. 30, won't be nearly as robust, Philip Klotzbach, hurricane specialist at Colorado State University, which pioneered long-range tropical storm forecasting, said Thursday.

Colorado State predicts just three hurricanes for the remainder of the season, which would be half of normal: On average, all hurricanes occur from Aug. 10 on.

Klotzbach's reasoning should provide some comfort to Floridians and others with coastal interests.

"The tropical Atlantic remains anomalously cool," he said in his updated outlook, and it has been "very dry." Also, shearing winds from the west have been "quite strong" during the last month across the Caribbean. Those winds can rip apart burgeoning tropical storms.

What's more, an El Niño, an anomalous warming in the tropical Pacific, is likely to develop, the Climate Prediction Center says, and that warming typically generates strong winds from the west that could add to the shearing.

Four major outlooks released in the spring called for a near-normal season, but AccuWeather this week put out a release saying that El Niño would have a dampening effect on the season. The government is due to update its outlook next week, and we would be surprised if it didn't shave a storm or two or three off its forecasts.

But even if El Niño fizzles, said Klotzbach, "we believe that the hurricane-unfavorable conditions in the Atlantic are likely to persist over the next several months."

No complaints have been reported from Florida.

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